Feb 1, 2012

Part-skim mozzarella sticks coated with crispy seasoned breadcrumbs and baked until hot and golden. Serve them with my quick marinara sauce and you have yourself an appetizer everyone will love.

Hot mozzarella sticks, I can't think of a more popular finger food with both kids and adults alike! I mean, what's not to like? Baking them as opposed to frying and using part skim cheese doesn't effect how good these are. The cheese still melts, see for yourself!

Of course, you'll want to serve them hot right out of the oven, because like any cheese, as they cool they harden.

It actually took me several attempts to get these perfect. I played around with different brands of light string cheese to see which yielded the best results. The winner was Sargento part-skim, low-sodium. Although it's not the cheese with the least amount of fat compared to some other brands, it had the best flavor and wasn't as salty as I found some brands to be.

These are freezer friendly, in fact these MUST be frozen before you bake them or you will have one big cheesy mess in your oven! The good news is you can bread them all ahead of time then place them on tray with wax paper and freeze them until you are ready to bake. Make the marinara sauce a day ahead as well. Happy Superbowl Sunday!!

Cut cheese in half to give you 24 pieces. Place cheese in the freezer until cheese is frozen.

In small bowl, whisk the egg. Place the flour on another small dish. In separate bowl, combine bread crumbs, panko, parmesan cheese and dried parsley.

Dip the frozen sticks in flour, shaking off excess, then into the egg, then coat with the crumbs.

Repeat this process with the remaining cheese placing them on a tray with wax paper. Place cheese back into the freezer until ready to bake (this is a must or they will melt before the crumbs get golden).

When ready to bake preheat oven to 400° F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and lightly spray with oil.

Place frozen cheese sticks on baking sheet. Spray the tops of the mozzarella sticks with a little more oil and bake in the bottom third of your oven until crisp, about 4 to 5 minutes. Turn and bake an additional 4 - 5 minutes watching them closely so they don't melt.

Makes 24 pieces.

* There will be extra crumbs and flour after breading, I've deducted them from the nutritional info.

WOW, just in time for the superbowl!!! Thanks for this recipe! I love mozzarella sticks and tried someone else's ww recipe but they just didn't taste right. I know yours will be yummy. Can't wait to make some! Thanks again!

Yay! Cheese sticks are my favorite! I attempted to make mozzarella sticks in college once and they just turned out to be puddles of cheese on the pan after I baked them :( This recipe looks way better!

@ Julie, my grandmother used to use water instead of eggs for the breadcrumbs to stick to chicken cutlets when the healthy members of the family would come over for dinner. I'm almost positive it would work in this situation too. cheese is stickier than chicken!

Julie for the egg allergy, I would substitute non-fat or low-fat buttermilk for the egg. I've done this for onion rings as well and had good luck with it. Looks like I have a new recipe for Super Bowl!

Instead of coating them with egg, try lemon juice. I just made chicken scallopini this way and it worked great. Not sure what flavor the cheese might absorb though? I wonder if chicken broth would work?

I was JUST talking with my family this weekend (as we sat and ate frozen...well, then, cooked, mozzarella stick) that I wanted to try making some! They laughed at me, but here is my solution! I was going to try and make up my own recipe but now I don't have to! Thanks!!!

This looks great! Actually all your recipes look great. I have tried several of them and they are delicious. Tonight I am making your spinach meatballs. They are cooking right now and smell wonderful. Thanks for sharing all your good recipes with us.

Just made these yummy mozzarella sticks. But instead of using the regular string cheese we substituted kraft jalapeno string cheese with even lower nutritional values and it added just the right amount of kick!!! We will be making these again for sure, thanks Gina :)

Every time I think I couldn't love you and your recipes more, you post something like this and I fall in love even more. I have Celiacs and eat gluten free and can make almost everything on here with just a few changes. I'm not sure what I ate for dinner before I found you! Thank you for making WW and weight loss easy and delicious!

I know this is a little late, but here's a link to a recipe for baked "fried" pickles!http://www.thevanillatulip.com/2011/11/cilantro-garlic-ranch-fried-pickles-and.htmlI made these at superbowl and they were super delicious! I served them with a zesty hidden valley ranch packet mixed up. It was a little thick so I would maybe add some milk to the sour cream to make it a little thinner, but other wise it made a delicious pair!

Hi Gina- these look great and will def be making for Super Bowl. My son and I made the Empanadas with your recipe last night and they were fabulous! Making those too! thanks for all your ideas and hard work. We are loving the food and it is really helping this foodie stay OP. Suzann

These sound delicious! I don't have mozzarella string cheese but I have the regular Sargento ball - so I figure I'll try making these tonight and just cut the ball up into strips - so we'll see how it goes!

I just made the chicken, escrole, white bean with whole wheat past and it was great! I'm trying to cut out the WHITE and just bought the 4C's brand of Italian bread crumbs but guess what...WHOLE WHEAT! I'm gonna use these for the recipe! Thank you for your great recipes Gina!!!!!Signed,An Italian Foodie!

OMG I am so excited to have found this site.I love everything about it and the pictures so I know how it's supposed to look at each step.trying baked rice and peas and chic.mush.in garlic wine sauce tonite.

YUM! My friends and I decided to have a Skinny Taste party next month. Everyone is to bring their favorite recipe from your website. I am sure everyone will have the same problem - to pick just one or two!

I also found your site from Pinterest. It has some great, regular, recipes. I just made the broccoli mac & cheese the other day. Very good. I will be making this over the weekend. I have tried it before but not freezing the sticks. I bought some store brand, so we will see how that goes.

These were delicious!!! The Sargento cheese had great flavor and they tasted better than others I've had before. Freezing the cheese before you bake them is definitely a must because they melt so fast in the oven. I limited my time after you flip them to about 2-3 minutes because the cheese was already oozing out, but regardless they were awesome. I also paired the dish with your marinara recipe and it was great! Thank you for a great, healthy recipe :)

I have made many of your recipes and I have loved them all so far, but was slightly disappointed tonight when I made these. Even though I followed the directions exactly, froze the cheese, then the prepared mozz sticks, they still melted flat in 6 minutes. I even used the exact cheese that you did. Still ate them with the marinara though and they tasted GREAT! Love your recipes -- keep them coming!

Just made these and my whole family loved them! Much healthier and way better tasting than the deep fried version. I also used WW cheese for mine and it turned out GREAT! I am loving all recipes I see on here. Thanks!

Hey Gina - I have made so many of yr recipes that I am addicted to looking thru all yr recipes. So, I just got out of the hospital and wanted to make a little something for my husband to snack on during the game. I just followed yr recipe for the mozzarella sticks but I used egg whites and whole wheat flour instead hoping to cut the calories a little bit more - they are in the freezer now and guess I will see how they come out later. Thanks, Connie

I must have done something wrong...they all melted. :(. I froze the cheese & followed the directions precisely. Should I have froze them again after "breading" them? Will definitely attempt them again.

I made these last night and the breading did stick, but they all melted after I flipped them onto the second side. Are we supposed to watch them carefully on the second side? I just set the timer for 5 minutes.

Gina, my family LOVES this recipe!!! I made these and the zucchini sticks, and they were big hits. I have a question though . . . I must be 'breading challenged'. For both recipes I had to use at least twice the breading and egg. I'm missing something in the technique - I even tapped off excess at every opportunity. Help!!!!

These were SO yummy, even though I had problems with the breading. I had to keep re dipping into the egg mixture to bread it all the way. They were more time consuming than I thought, but I also doubled it to make cheddar sticks for my hubby. Those didn't come out though. It was a puddle of cheese and breading. But mine were definitely worth it!!Thanks for the recipe!!!

I just started really dieting. I went out to dinner the other night and my hubby ordered cheese sticks. It was not until I ate 2 and went to put my calories into fat secret that I saw how high the fat content and the calories were. It was 43% of my RDI just to have cheese sticks!!! Needless to say, this recipe looks amazing and its nice to know that I don't have to go without cheese sticks for the rest of my life!!!

I just tried this and had to take them out after just 6ish minutes total since they started oozing... when I was breading, I left a few fingerprint spots where the breading came off on my fingers, and that's where the cheese oozed. Would you recommend a double-breading? Maybe freezing after the first egg bath, then dipping in egg again?

I used water, left out the flour, and used panko italian style bread crumbs and panko plain bread crumbs...turned out amazing!! Saved some calories by not using the egg and by not using the flour :-) Excellent recipe! Thank you

OMG these were GREAT! So easy and so good. We used egg beaters in place of the egg and I found panko crumbs seasoned with parmesan and herbs. So we just added a hint of italian seasoning. Amazing and perfectly gooey.

Didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I'll try again with Sargento. I used WW brand bc I had a coupon and forgot about spraying them. They didn't get crispy or stay hot. They also spilled out of the breading. In the 2 minutes from oven to plate, they were solid cheese again. :( I'm going to try again with Sargento, spray, and I'm going to do as a reader commneted, and coat them twice. :)

Hi Gina, as a self-identified domestic diva in training, I want to thank you for your easy to follow, great recipes. I've made it a new years resolution to learn how to cook this year, and your website is helping me a lot. I made these mozzarella sticks as an appetizer for a dinner party for some of my girlfriends and they LOVED the dish! Of course, they already follow Skinny Taste, but I at least got some cooking street cred with these--they were delish! Thanks!

These were great! I used the new tomato and basil string cheese because my roommate wanted those ones. They spilled a little out of the breading, but I'm not sure if that's because I left them in too long or if it's due to the type of cheese. I also didn't have any cooking spray to coat them with. Despite them falling apart, they tasted wonderful!

These are so delicious! I served mine with fat free ranch.....You must eat them straight out of the oven or they will get very rubbery. But hey even rubbery and cold they still tasted amazing! Next recipe to try is the baked onion rings!!!

Hi! I made these for dinner last night and they are delicious! I almost didn't feel guilty for eating them. I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I wrote a post in my blog about this post, see here: http://www.luuux.com/food/day-four-skinny-baked-mozzarella-sticks. Thanks for a great recipe!:)

While these tasted AMAZING, they oozed and melted on me. I followed the recipe to a T, and the sticks were frozen solid when I breaded them. After 4 minutes on the first side, when we went to flip, they were so flimsy and started to fall apart. After only 2 minutes on the reverse side, we had to take them out because they were going flat and the cheese was going everywhere. Again, they tasted delicious and we had no trouble eating them, but I would love to use these at an upcoming party and I would love for them to look like yours. Did you use your fingers to bread? Could that be where I went wrong? Any suggestions?

I am an 11 year old girl, and I made these tonight for my family with no problem. At the end of its baking time, some cheese started to ooze out of the side, but that was it. I served it with some warmed-up marinara sauce and it was a hit! I will definitely make again. The great thing about these was that I did them a few hours in advance, so when it came time for dinner, I just popped them in the oven. This is a great recipe!

I have these breaded, but I haven't baked them yet. I found that freezing them before breading did nothing to help the breading stick. Must be the kind of cheese I'm using. At any rate, I'll bake these later today and see how they work. Thanks for the recipe!

I made these yesterday and I just want to say WOW were these amazing. I even got my sister to try AND like them and she hates anything remotely healthy. Great recipe. However next time I make it i'm not going to freeze the cheese because I think it made the cheese harder to melt/get gooey.

Love this! I wonder how many points the other ingredients (besides cheese) add? I know you deducted the remaining toppings but I'm not sure how much. I'm using reduced fat cheese sticks (1pp each. Any guesses? Thanks!

I really wanted to try your tomato bisque recipe, and we always used to eat grilled cheese with our tomato soup. Now that we're trying to eat healthier (and i have really been looking for an excuse to make cheese sticks) i figured this would be a great alternative. Everyone in my family loved them so I went ahead and made some more for the kids to make as a snack. The Mozzerella Sticks and Tomato Bisque really was a great pairing, I highly suggest it. Thank you so much!

I tried it with the light Frigo string cheese - just letting you guys know I wouldn't really recommend it, I cooked them for at least 15 minutes and they still weren't very melty. I'll have to try Sargento next time like Gina suggested.

I had trouble getting the crumb mixture to stick to the cheese sticks... i def. couldnt get them evernly coated and some spots the mixture wouldnt stick at all... what did i do wrong? i got them in the freezer right now, waiting to put in oven, hoping they turn out ok...

My husband and I made these last night. We also had the problem of them melting totally, but after reading the comments, I understand that we should have put them back in the freezer for a while after breading.

However, we were curious as to why you dip the sticks into the flour before the egg. The egg was washing off the flour that we just coated them with. Did we do something wrong?

how is it that I've JUST found you? Happened upon some lovely recipes and pinned away!

I'm a PINTEREST contributor for Better Homes & Gardens and have pinned your yummy moz sticks recipe as one of my new favs! You can see the pin here: http://pinterest.com/pin/56787645271792810/ on this board: http://pinterest.com/bhg/blogger-recipes-we-love/

I made these mozzarella sticks (with cheese head string cheese) along with the skinny baked chicken nuggets and my family absolutely loved them! My husband just called and asked if i could make more mozzarella sticks for tonight. Thank you for the recipe Gina!!

Absolutely worked for us. We made them gluten-free by using a GF flour mix we always have on hand and brown rice bread crumbs (with italian seasonings). We made "panko" by just running GF Rice Krispies through the food processor (I'm pretty sure any similar cereal, including any of the GF Chex, would have done the same thing). It was great; we loved them.

HI, I just made these as directed. I froze them for about 4 hours before baking. They melted into a big pile of cheese before they were even slightly brown. Any suggestions? Did I need to freeze them longer?

YUMMY, made them tonight didn't have panko so I used crushed rice chex, only had plain bread crumbs so I added itlaian herb seasoning, Everyone loved them. I agree you should put them back in freezer after they are coated for at least 15 minutes, then bake. No problem with coating coming off. (my husband thought they were from the store)

I made this tonight and they turned out great! I didn't have any flour so I actually used some flax seed instead- you couldn't taste the flax at all! I also didn't have any panko, I just used regular breadcrumbs. My boyfriend loved them and he is pretty picky about his mozzarella sticks and loves them friend.